Taken
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
"In late 2012, the ACLU announced a settlement in the case, under which police must now observe rigorous rules during traffic stops in Tenaha and Shelby County: traffic stops will be videotaped, and the officer must give reason for the stop and for suspicion of criminal activity. Drivers are to be advised that they can refuse a search, and dogs will no longer be used in conducting traffic stops. Property determined to have been taken improperly must be returned within 30 business days. Also, asset forfeiture revenue from traffic stops must be donated to non-profit organizations, or used to pay for the officer training required by the settlement."
For once, the good guys won, although (like usual) no one was charged criminally in connection with it.
"Our four pillars of litigation are private property, economic liberty, free speech and school choice." - their website
What's the deal with school choice? Seems kinda random
One thing I wish advocacy groups allowed is donating towards narrower goals. For instance I support most of what the ACLU does, but I don't really care for their views on gay marriage and don't particularly want to fund that part. It would be great if I could donate to more specific parts of the organization (same goes for public radio, haha)
The people who donate primarily for the gay marriage fight don't get to earmark their money either.
I don't see why they don't make it possible to earmark money - I think they would end up getting a LOT more funding:
People that don't want to fund gay marriage advocacy would donate to the issues that they find more important, and people that feel strongly about gay marriage would donate more because they know it would all go towards their pet issue.
Or are you straight and hence it doesn't affect you? Kinda defeats the point of donating to charities...
I would like to not pay more because of whom I choose to marry.
I know a lot of smart people, myself included, who read HN regularly and oppose gay marriage.
I'm not strongly against gay marriage. I simply don't support it. Sorry if my explanation is a little disjointed. There isn't one particular issue that explains it all.
I see the whole issue as completely artificial. It was almost entirely created and started by Gavin Newsom (former mayor of SF). It was a demogogic move on his part to try to get support for his run for governor several years later.
Aside: Ironic it backfired and ended up pigeon holeing him as a far left politician.
No one talked about or wanted gay marriage before he brought it up.
A more nebulous reason is that society is moving away from marriage. People are more and more living in civil unions. Marriage has become a religious/traditional thing. So revising/redefining antiquated traditions to appease a group of people seems unnecessary.
I think the idea of redefining a term like marriage is also rather problematic for me. It's always described a union between a man and a woman, since like the times of Hammurabi - and now we're just redefining it? It seems a little absurd.
The address the issue, we created a new term. "Civil Unions". But for some reason this isn't good enough - and I don't know why. Seems like the real goal is to redefine a several thousand year old term - which kinda seems revisionist to me.
Another argument I've seen and that I've never seen addressed is: why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.I personally feel like if they're going to go through all of this, they might as well allow all marriage.
At the end of the day I wouldn't really care if gay marriage passed. What bothers me the most is that so much time, effort and money is spent on something that is a rather insignificant issue.
The right to visit loved ones at a hospital and the tax benefits are more symptomatic of broken hospital/tax laws than a huge national issue on par with the civil rights movement. I think calling gay marriage a civil rights issue is hyperbolic and disingenuous (and is polyamorous marriage a civil rights issue too?). I think there are way way way more important issues currently to deal. Thousands of people are rotting in jails for non violent crimes, thousands of people have their lives ruined by medical bills, thousands of people are forced into plea bargains for crimes they never committed. There is so much suffering happening around us, and we spend out time arguing about redefining marriage. It's just really frustrating for me to see this artificial debate occupy so much of the collective unconscious of the country (and now the world).
I would prefer if we just make it illegal for anyone (IRS, immigration, employers, etc) to discriminate based on marital status. Problem solved.
The same reason "separate but equal" wasn't good enough for black people in the mid 20th century: It isn't equal at all.
It's not about redefining a term or forcing people to think a certain way. It's about being recognized on a legal level as being equal.
> why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.
There's a stigma against polygamy due to it being used almost entirely as a way to abuse and imprison women and children. That's also ignoring the legal hurdles; for example, power of attorney gets tricky when there is more than one spouse. Same with inheritance.
> What bothers me the most is that so much time, effort and money is spent on something that is a rather insignificant issue.
You think it's insignificant because it doesn't affect you. However, for a lot of gay and lesbian couples, it's a huge issue in their lives for many reasons. The fact that you can't even imagine this being a serious issue for someone else is quite telling, and it's something all too common amongst people who argue against gay marriage.
You should take some time and look into yourself to see why you have such trouble empathizing with others.
"Separate but equal" when it comes to schools is very different than equality under the law; the latter being much easier to achieve and can be rectified by law when it falls short. Separate but equal in schools is intrinsically unequal, this is not true for civil unions. I know that the attempts to hitch gay marriage to the civil rights wagon is a stumbling block for some people.
Restricting marriage to pairs of opposite sex plainly discriminates on sex in the same way that restricting marriage to pairs of the same race discriminated on race. Who you are permitted to marry is determined by your race/sex.
Limiting marriage to pairs does not discriminate in the same way. It may or may not be an inappropriate restriction, but its not the same type of discrimination that is at issue with either the opposite-sex or the same-race restrictions, so there is no "double-standard" in eliminating either or both of those restrictions and not eliminating the restriction to pairs.
There is a religious subset of the libertarian crowd that is all about those four issues. School choice means religious and/or home schooling (which tends to also be religion centered).
Their intersection with the civil liberties crowd is pretty small - they dislike acknowledging that there are systemic problems beyond their main issues. For example they don't believe in anti-discrimination laws because they say the market place (private property and economic liberty) will sort it all out - despite all historical evidence to the contrary.
For me, seeing that list would make me wary. My impression of such groups is that there are indeed some people who truly believe that but there are plenty for which it is simply cover for bigotry.
The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend.
Please look up home school resources in your area.
I can pretty much guarantee that you have at least two: one that is explicitly religious, one that is explicitly secular.
Lots of people have gotten fed up with their public schools for secular reasons.
School choice can also mean vouchers for semi-public technical or accelerated schools.
Gay marriage is a civil rights issue. ACLU is all about civil rights.
If you don't support civil rights, don't donate to the ACLU. Full stop.
The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station."
The article doesn't say it outright, but does imply that they consented to the police search. Never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, should you do this. Even if you "have nothing to hide." These two thought they had nothing to hide too. But what you think doesn't matter when the officer's opinion on what is "suspicious" is all that matters. There is nothing whatsoever for you to gain from agreeing to a search of your property.
Don't give them probable cause and make them get a warrant. If you agree to a search you might as well hand your rights over at the same time. Depending on the officer(s) to exercise sound judgment and restraint when they have little to no incentive to do so is simply foolish.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/05/7-rules-for-recording-...
That's not a lawful reason for suspicion in any of the many states where medical marijuana is legal; I don't recall the ruling offhand, but the court has said this.
This article is so biased and reeks of agenda. There are no other more sympathetic people to do news stories for? My BS radar just off the charts. If you can look past the fair amount of cash in the car and the drug paraphernalia then there is a need for outrage. However, I can't.
While I might see a reason for seizure laws I could easily see them being abused. That said, the example given in the article isn't going to win over any opponents.
It doesn't matter one tiny little bit if you think the people in question are drug runners, or even if they actually are, in fact, drug runners. All that matters is that the government took their property as a de facto punishment for having committed a crime (running drugs) without ever actually proving that they committed a crime.
So yeah, there was definitely an agenda here, but it seems to have been to demonstrate a genuinely scary trend in law enforcement and government overreach, which is exactly what it should be.
Of course, pretty much everyone has 'drug paraphernalia' lying around somewhere. My coffee grinder, my wife's kitchen scales, our snack-sized sandwich bags, the spoons in our cutlery drawer...
However, police are able to arrest for a crime at any point of the process. That said, other than ones that aren't reversible (like murder), they usually let you commit the crime and then arrest you. This makes it easier to prosecute you.
I don't necessarily have a problem with asset forfeiture just that it needs to be required to be associated with a conviction, there should be a cap on what the police get (to avoid overzealous use), and there should be a quick and logical appeal process to prevent innocents having property taken via 'splash damage'.
Nothing wrong with that agenda.
One could certainly give the benefit of the doubt to the police in any particular case where there's a large amount of cash drug paraphenelia involved. However, when this happens to a large number of people (who are never charged but their assets are seized) it's pretty clear what's going on.
In any case, the class action lawsuit was settled in the plaintiffs' favor so clearly, the police department must have recognized that they would lose (especially when the state declined to defend them).
Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_P._Scott
See also: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-governments-war-on...
and: http://www.volokh.com/2010/04/06/institute-for-justice-repor...
Keep in mind as soon as you decline the search, the cops will go out of their way to find multiple things to charge you with and then you have more problems than when they pulled you over.
Refusing to do what a cop asks you to will pretty much always piss them off. Most of the time, that's okay, but sometimes you just want to be let on your way and be left alone.
> Especially (unfortunately) if you're white and upper class looking
If "being white or upper class looking" gives you an advantage with the police then, by implication, not having those characteristics is a disadvantage.
This is exactly why laws exist and should, ideally, be applied impartially. I'd feel much better depending on the law than a cop's favorable feelings about me. I don't mind pissing off a cop of to assert my rights.
- "I'd really prefer not to, if that's okay. It just makes me uncomfortable, it's nothing personal."
- "I have a cousin who's a lawyer, and he said I should never let myself get searched or questioned without a lawyer. I feel like I should take his advice. I'm sure you understand."
- "I watched a video on the internet saying it's a bad idea to consent to a search, even for innocent people, and it made a pretty convincing case. Sorry to be so difficult, I know you're just doing your job."
Above all, stay calm, friendly, and respectful, all while standing firm.
(Probably not a good idea if you were pulled over for a traffic infraction...)
From the article: "The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)"
Whatever you might say is moot, if the cops are willing to play that card.
Not really, if things go poorly it makes your lawyer's job a lot easier to get the case thrown out.
> "Liscense and registration and step out of the car"
> "Are you carryin' a weapon on you I know a lot of you are"
> I ain't steppin out of shit all my papers legit
> "Well, do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?"
> Well my glove compartment is locked so are the trunk in the back
> And I know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that."
> "We'll see how smart you are when the K9's come."It is important to remember that the police has an adversarial relationship to you. Their job is to look for reasons to arrest you. Asserting your rights or looking suspicious is not a crime.
> Above all, stay calm, friendly, and respectful, all while standing firm.
This advice cannot be repeated enough. Most of us deal with the police so infrequently that, in that adversarial context, we have very little practice on how to do it effectively. Worse yet, asserting your rights appears to violate many of the social strictures on not being rude and respecting authority. Quoting Sen no Rikyu, "that must be set aside".
I thought their job was to serve and protect. Of course, quotas tend to confuse things...
However, that changes if the police has probable cause to believe that you are or could be suspected of having committed, in the process of commiting, or are about to commit a crime. They are trained to look for indicators that provide that probable cause. Once that happens, serving and protecting you is no longer their primary goal.
The police are expert at making that transition seamlessly while most civilians are bad at recognizing the change or knowing that they have the right to withhold consent.
Combine that with the fact that they were using the disclosure as their reason for claiming the money, and you have an impossible to escape situation.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Please do not consent to any random searches. Cops can only do it legally if you consent. They will word it like you should consent, but please exercise your right to not not be searched! You can say no. While I have nothing illegal in my car I don't want cops rooting around in it on principal.
I am amazed how many people don't know they can and should decline a request to search. A friend of mine got pulled over for speeding and he told me "I had to let them search my car for drugs otherwise they were going to impound it."
It doesn't amaze me, sadly. These are hard things to know.
Knowing your rights is important to not be taken advantage of. This should be taught in school.
Though I've seen cases where the defendant is charged with something and their car seized then the evidence is later found during an "inventory" of the vehicle.
IANAL so I don't how one would deal with that.
You can't. Police have the authority to impound your car for any moving violation. They can inventory the contents of your car in the process.
Why doesn't this happen often? Fear of public outcry. That, and an officer needs the search to unearth evidence worth the paperwork and bother. Police officers have bosses just like you and me.
Your only recourse: follow traffic laws to the letter. Unfortunately, this is more difficult than it sounds.
But seizing a car because it's got a pipe in it is insane. Even if they had a small quantity of pot, that's crazy - a small stash for personal use doesn't make someone a dealer.
The true problem though is government, both altogether and the increase in the Federal government at the expense of local or State governments. Both the Democratic and Republican parties stand only to lose power by embracing either libertarian or state values. Consequently, a party that weakens itself with its own values, will always fail against a party that strengthens itself. Additionally, when the backlash from Bush's increase in government became too severe on the right, Obama stepped in to increase the size and reach of the government on the left. Until Democrats and Republicans acknowledge this, the political system will continue to use us against each other to enrich themselves and rob us of our liberties.
This is the issue of our generation: the gross overreach of government institutionalized by politicians pitting opposing mass ideologies against each other while empowering themselves. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will ever surrender their party values for fear the other will abuse the opportunity to seize more power.
We need a pro-state or libertarian party. I suspect a pro-state party would generate far greater support, likely because it is part of our historical/constitutional DNA.
EDIT: Sorry for the seemingly tenuous relation to the article. The reason this relates is that all of the justification given by local law enforcement for violating our for Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were Federal precedents and Executive Orders. In other words when the Federal government consistently violates federal (constitutional) laws, local governments are emboldened to do the same. Additionally, the size and power of the federal government itself emboldens it to violate its own (constitutional) accountabilities to the people.
We need a government that protects individual liberties at at all levels: from federal down to local.
I think that in this day and age, we need a new method for developing laws. Big software companies will pay bounties for bugs/security holes; why isn't there something like that for flaws/bad incentive structures/tax exploits in government?
Perhaps a more ambitious goal would be a marriage of both. Fewer laws through greater empowerment, visibility and accountability enabled only through technology. In order to get there though, I think we have many issues we will need to solve before making matters worse, like who holds root access to the the government servers?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The problem with this would be that you would get many people trying to change laws that they don't like, and even groups of people "fighting" over trying to make a loosen/tighten restrictions in a law. For example, just imagine the tug-of-war between pro-gay marriage and anti-gay marriage groups over the statutes governing marriage.
You would probably have to pursue a Wikipedia-like solution and 'lock' sections of law to this kind of input, which at least on its face, would start to make this approach more useless (because you would only be plugging holes in laws that few people cared about).
Also, sorry, my pro-state musings in my edit were not meant to characterize my anti-government criticism regarding the abuse of government power as pro-state. In retrospect, it was misguided for me to include that there.
You said "state and local governments [...] most abused peoples' rights." Even though you meant in America, the more important question is in places like America.
People can move away from abusive/totalitarian local governments.
This has been a known problem in a number of small towns scattered across America. We must distinguish between "evil feds" and the "evil locals". In this case, it is clear that state and local laws need to be reformed.
Many states, facing fiscal crises, have expanded the reach of their forfeiture statutes, and made it easier for law enforcement to use the revenue however they see fit. In some Texas counties, nearly forty per cent of police budgets comes from forfeiture. (Only one state, North Carolina, bans the practice, requiring a criminal conviction before a person’s property can be seized.)
This is a state-by-state, county-by-county issue. This can of course be solved by national legislation... but only if we have the political will to pass a national law on the issue. Blaming the issue on 'them feds' is ignorant at best, and harmful to the cause at worst.
There will always be some dumb redneck town that will prey on travelers. America is too large, too vast. And that is where the Federal Government needs to step in and issue a smack-down.
False, many people are willing to criticize both sides. If you look for zealots you will surely find them on both sides the same way it's always been.
"Consequently, a party that weakens itself with its own values, will always fail against a party that strengthens itself. "
This is not a problem. This is good because extreme, ideology driven agendas are generally suboptimal.
"Additionally, when the backlash from Bush's increase in government became too severe on the right, Obama stepped in to increase the size and reach of the government on the left."
This is, as they say, not the whole story.
http://www.hamiltonproject.org/images/uploads/thp_image_uplo...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/01/t...
"This is the issue of our generation: the gross overreach of government"
There are many important issues of our generation, if we have to pick one I'm going with inequality and the destruction of public education.
See, for refutation, Andrew Sullivan's "Since When Was Free-Loading A Conservative Value?"
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/08/05/since-when-was-fre...
You can get the good of the forfeiture (expeditious seizure) without the perverse actions by decoupling the proceeds. More training isn't going to work on its own.
Casually, it seems like this trend can be traced to our need for "efficiency", and the proliferation of business concepts into government and public institutions. Incentivize behavior that you want and you'll get more of it, etc. Makes sense in business contexts, but in public services it is detrimental.
Trolling seems to have become the 21st century's biggest problem facing the "rule of law". I suppose once law became expensive relative to the median income, it was inevitable, but it really seems to have become the dominant emergent behavior of today's unsavories nearly overnight.
Makes me worried for the poor (literally) people in the US. We in Germany have at least the "Prozesskostenbeihilfe" and mandatory attorneys as soon as you're arrested.
Compared to this, US system looks like 3rd world and it's sick to see this happening.
The America most people see in their mind is the one of decades ago; it's not the America of today. The America of today is quite poor, with around 40% making below the minimum wage of 1968. While there's still a lot of wealth there, it's heavily concentrated into the hands of a few, as is typical in second-world and third-world countries. And it's difficult to reconcile that image with the one in our minds.
But taking someones car because they were driving it while buying $10 of pot? Absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure with a lawyer you can get your car back and charges dropped but if you don't have the money for that, it's simply not fair to take someone's vehicle for recreational drug use.
There's no arguing that it's against the law but you don't get your vehicle taken away for speeding or driving away in it while shoplifting or writing a bad check.
What's the difference?
> I have no problem with this being done with legitimate drug dealers.
Yes, well, that is the point of the War on Drugs, yes? And yet........
At that point you can counter-sue and you would eventually win, but not without a potentially expensive legal battle. Organizations like the ACLU can only work so many case, so they're pretty ruthless about prioritizing the ones likely to make a media impact.
The worst thing is you can't avoid the police in Texas if you need to drive for work/life. There are mandatory immigration checkpoints miles away from the border. Everyone is stopped and questioned.
It's not just Texas. I was illegally detained and had my car searched despite refusing on the interstate in KS. But it seems to get progressively worse the closer you get to the border with Mexico.
Yup. Happened to an acquaintance who was in town for a charity event. He was arrested in Fort Worth, and when we tried to post bond for him, the jailers "couldn't find" him. Went on for 3 days. The ironic part was that the guy was a prosecutor (from Mass.)
See also: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/12/tarrant-county...
Obviously my anecdote doesn't prove anything, but it's healthly to keep in mind that broad brush labeling of the whole region as having draconian law enforcement can do a disservice to those that don't fit that label.
The sheriff is elected by the locals, after all.
EDIT: Sounds like the ACLU (+1) already followed through with the embarrassment that was Tenaha, Texas. But it makes you throw up a little to hear the Wash. D.C. attorney general try to justify the importance of ill-gotten funds to prop up corrupt police :(
Absolutely nothing. Learn to deal with it, because this is the future.
The cops were abusing their power and it went on until someone stuck up for themselves, rather than "learning to deal with it". You see how that works? They sued them and won. The ACLU, who brought the case, is made up of average citizens. They put their pants on one leg at a time like you and I, as does their donor base.
Any average citizen can call and write representatives; they can spread their thoughts via word of mouth, social media, and traditional media; they can vote with their dollar by supporting groups like the ACLU, the EFF, the NRA, and others that are professionally taking up the fight for their particular flavor of civil liberty. It's never been easier to do stuff like this, thanks to the miracle of modern communications technology. I could pursue all avenues noted above this afternoon and be done with it if I just had the will (the way is literally at our fingertips).
Throwing up hands and saying, "deal with it" sure is easy; it's what bullies and opportunists count on to continue taking more and creating less.
The freedoms we have didn't happen on accident. They are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature. They are under attack by people. They always have been and they always will be. That is the future, the present and the past. It's a long, hard fight. We've opted out of the food chain, it's not tooth and nail anymore in 1st world countries, but there's a constant battle of wits and wills. There are no silver bullets, it's a group effort on our side and "theirs".
You should join in and pick a side (there are many to choose from). Fight back. It's not easy, but the rewards are as high as the costs. You'll never look back on your life and think, "Gee, I wish I'd spent more time not getting involved in things I cared about." And you'll never have to let someone look you in the eye and say you're a wimp, you didn't try, and you _don't_ count.
1) A general level of dissatisfaction; 2) Someone or something that crystallizes the dissatisfaction into action.
And it doesn't always mean open warfare. Rosa Parks satisfied criterion #2 to launch the Civil Rights era.
Yes they are.
Without infusions of external energy—in this case citizens who work to keep their rights—entropy increases, complex structures rot and crumble, and order fades into disorder. If checks and balances aren't actively maintained, they slowly disappear.
It takes lots of effort to maintain a legal framework that, from the cops' perspective, mostly makes it harder to close cases where the suspect is "obviously" guilty. So first they start ignoring little bits of it to speed things up. Then they ignore bigger things, and entropy increases further. The fewer legal barriers there are to a conviction, the less ordered we can call the system. After more of this erosion, we reach the most disordered state of all: This guy has a gun, so you do what he says or else.
ΔS >= 0, in our social systems just as much as in the universe, because they can't escape the limits of the system they're embedded in.
>Yes they are.
No, They are not. Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly. Freedom has no mass, it's an idea.
I'm familiar with entropy. You could just as easily say that the power structures in this story seeking to steal from the weak are being eroded as well. They, too, must be maintained. Entropy is a force that both sides of society must contend with, and has little to do with my argument as gravity.
Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of the application. To think that horrible things done by humanity are no ones fault. To think that it's forgivable to acquiesce and accept evil as inevitable. I've surely succumb to it myself throughout my life.
However, evil and maliciousness can be fought by the same agents that perpetrate it. Small acts by many individuals add up to greatness (NASA) or horror (War).
Evil will never be eradicated, it's part of human nature. It can be held in check by those who seek to do good, and throwing up hands and saying, "It has nothing to do with me. Forces of nature." is not some virtuous way out. It's not some noble intellectual loophole that you understand shit happens and are above the squalor. It's an insidious brand of laziness that I see far too much of from in a crowd as empowered as those on Hackernews.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Possibly[1] Edmund Burke
> Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly.
That's not what I'm doing. A government is not a philosophical construct—it's a system of rules enforced by living, concrete people, by physical means, against other living, concrete people. For the same reason that your house gets messy or your car might fall apart if you don't take it to the shop, civil liberties that take a lot of law-enforcement effort to respect and seem to help the bad guys won't survive if cops ignore them with impunity.
The answer is not "nothing". The answer is "Anything _except_ nothing". What they WILL do is a matter for the historians to debate after the dust clears.
There are many reasons to bow down to those that would do yourself or others harm. I live a comfortable life. I'm not in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails (hello NSA), but to say it is because there is nothing that CAN be done is a fantasy. It would help me feel better about seeing evil in the world, recognizing it, and then giving it a pass out of laziness or because it directly benefits me. It's an attitude that makes us part of the problem. It's not an excuse that pardons me from the fight.
Donate to the ACLU.
Ideally, I could donate and NEVER receive any communication from them. Same goes for the blood bank I donate to at my university. I'll give blood whenever there is a drive on campus (very often), but I don't need to be called every two weeks and read a script for 10 minutes.
https://www.aclu.org/donate/join-renew-give
PS: I'd like to see a kickstarter for dashcams that stream in real-time so even if they're seized the record persists.
Unfortunately sat phones are still expensive for this sort of thing, although I suppose it might be feasible to do low-frame rate black and white shots.
In this case a large amount of money was taken into custody by the Nebraska State Police. It was found guilty of being the proceeds of illegal drug sales and confiscated by the state under asset forfeiture. The human being who had previously been in possession of this currency was neither convicted of nor charged with any drug crime. The US Supreme Court upheld the conviction of the defendant currency.
I wish I was making this shit up.
It's at least conceivable how $125k USD could have been involved in The Drugs. But a crucifix?
1. Internet makes small town news national news in a heartbeat if outrageous enough.
2. Currently it is a perfect storm for law enforcement - there is a decade of visible overreach, NSA, TSA, general tiredness of war on drugs and the lost wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on "using war for almost any government effort, republicans hate everything government related because Obama is in office, democrats are disillusioned with him on civil rights and there is global demand for that kind of stories and the journalists supply.
So maybe the first.
If there was a decade long shortage of clean water, if unemployment was > 30%, or if the FCC outlawed reality television [1], then people might lose it and demand change. But the intangible theft of one's rights in a (presently) nonviolent way just doesn't register on the radar for most people.
[1] Unless it was "to protect the children" of course.
I can see why you might feel that way but, in the long-term big picture, no, they're really not. There was a time when law enforcement wasn't required to recognize your right to be silent, for example, and most of the civil rights advances of the sixties still hold. Civil forfeiture is dangerous and relatively new, but there was plenty of dangerous stuff back in the day.
Now, the fact that things could be a lot worse is depressing in a whole different way...
As I related a few days ago, it has always been this way for some of us [0].
Well educated people with money tend not to have to deal with most of it. And can usually afford to make it go away when they do. Cops also tend not to bother them as much.
I have a personal interest in "poor people's" issues, my wife works with a poor "population" and I live in an area with concerns about social justice so I'm a little more aware of it.
The poor are different from you and me and it's not just because they have less money.
But you can certainly be screwed over by corrupt or, worse, power-hungry police even when you're a well-to-do straight white male.
The difference now is:
1) Stories about this sort of thing are becoming well-known thanks to the internet;
2) Police are starting to mess with white people.
What is this, some medieval state? Are the local lords so unable to fund themselves through taxes that they extort passing travellers?
> In the midst of festivities one evening in late May, 2008, forty-odd officers in black commando gear stormed the gallery and its rear patio, ordering the guests to the ground. Some in attendance thought that they were the victims of an armed robbery. One young woman who had fallen only to her knees told me that a masked figure screamed at her, “Bitch, you think you’re too pretty to get in the mud?” A boot from behind kicked her to the ground"
While the militarization of police is a huge issue, it's one that is orthogonal to the one the OP tackles. A system in which police can confiscate property -- with very low risk of being called out for it -- and share a cut of the seized goods (with the prosecutors) will quickly lead to a very bad situation. It doesn't matter if the money goes to buying more commando gear or towards a prosecutor's vacation home.
"Outraged by their experience in Tenaha, Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson helped to launch a class-action lawsuit challenging the abuse of a legal doctrine known as civil-asset forfeiture. “Have you looked it up?” Boatright asked me when I met her this spring at Houston’s H&H Saloon, where she runs Steak Night every Monday. She was standing at a mattress-size grill outside. “It’ll blow your mind.”"
What does the grill have to do with this? Why does every story have to have adjective laden filler how the people's hair looks like and where the interviewer meets them?
It's called Litery Journalism.
As I recall, Gay Talese and Joan Didion, among others, helped to popularize it.
B. Because it's a way to draw the reader into a story through imagery, before exploring the legal/technical details.
Adjective-laden writing is the mark of an amateur. However, in the passage you're objecting to, there doesn't seem to be a single adjective in there.
No, no it's not. It's flawed and messed up intrinsically. The fact that even a story covering this would say something to the effect of it's OK just abused... sigh.
I hate to tell you this, but as a non-American I've always had the idea that rural cops and sheriffs are likely to be corrupt in this manner, especially 'good old boys.' I don't mean that as a slur on rural people and think there's urban corruption too but it takes different forms there because of population density v. isolation.
Is this also an offshoot of a no tax policy in Texas?
In both Texas and DC, I think it's very much a side effect of politicians' unwillingness to raise taxes. There's a vicious circle of ever-increasing pension obligations, stagnant revenue, and voter apathy that allows this and other sorts of corruption to flourish. Most people are not that interested in politics, but they get annoyed when their taxes change (hell, I'm liberal and I get annoyed about my taxes). It's one of the few issues that can mobilize a majority of voters. In this political calculus, corruption has a lower cost because although the effects are more severe, they're not as widely distributed.
http://www.texasobserver.org/gone-rogue/
[1] edit: I'm the one who is mistaken, see frogpelt below. Leaving it up because I think it adds more to the conversation regarding the practice of police work as it relates to drugs and property seizure.
It's a good job that American Law Enforcement has shown itself over and over again to not abuse the powers granted to it then.
Please, please fix your country. (Because I really do want to visit. Just not while it's this broken.)
At this point the USA is not far from Putin's Russia in terms of totalitarianism and corruption.
Alabama Town’s Failed Pension Is Warning to Cities and States (956 days ago)
More Struggling Borrowers Face Pay Garnishment (1221 days ago)
Millions of Unemployed Face Years without Jobs (1260 days ago)
All submitted by pg himself over the years. How is this story so different?
The first article is political, and I would hope that pg would think better than to post if he was given the same decision over again. It probably felt "less dangerous" to post it two years ago; back then, HN didn't have nearly so many people interested in discussing the political side of an issue--you know, the people you see in this thread :)
To me, the biggest value of sites like HN is always the comments. Here we have some of the brightest, smartest, most driven people around the world gathered together. I think it's interesting to see what others think about things like this. I don't want a political discussion every day, but reading comments on important subjects like civil forfeiture from really, really smart people is interesting and informative.
It's likely that many on HN today will have a big impact in shaping our lives in many ways over the next decade and beyond — not just from a technology standpoint.
I for one, don't mind the occasional off-topic post that provokes interesting and thoughtful discussion.
(And BTW — this is my 2nd account, which I created in order to use my real name — my original account is 4 years old)
Now law enforcement knows this, the gun dealer also knows this and the gun manufacturer also keeps tabs on it's biggest dealers.
The incentive here is to make money, and nothing else. It's funny that while guns are sold and used in actual crimes the Police in that town are too busy 'cashing' in on poor unsuspected (allegedly non-criminal) citizens.
Awesome!
I wonder, have you ever bought a gun in a gun store? Done so after 1998?